Single-threaded performance between the older Intel Core i7-3960X and newer Core i7-4960X is going to be nearly identical, which means we may see the Haswell-based 4770K outperforming both cores in some tests.

Intel is poised to launch a number of eight-core Xeon processors— moving one of those chips over to LGA2011 while refreshing the chipset to add native USB 3.0 support and more SATA 6G ports could have been a reasonable update for the platform.